02/13/2006

Michael Havens on Wine Therapy

The first night I was in the Loire, I met up with wine importer Joe Dressner and his flock at Domaine du Closel in Savennires. Jeff, who two years ago left New York to plant vines in Canada, was in tow.

He told me that Michael Havens--a Californian winemaker I wrote about in The New York Times in 2001--had responded to a five-year-old thread on the site Winetherapy.com, commenting on my article, For Better or Worse Winemaker's Go High Tech.

Havens posted:

"Unfortunately, Alice, your article illustrated the danger of a very little knowledge about a topic. Had you reported a tenth of the facts given you in your inquiry, you might have had an honest article about modern tools in winemaking. As it is, you demonstrated why the supposed "newspaper of record" has become a sham: you only fulfilled your editor's request for "facts" to back up a pre-determined thesis. Back to the fashion pages with you!"

M.Havens

Mr. Havens was wrong. I got the facts straight.

I suspect that after all of these years Havens is still upset that I reported his use of micro-oxygenation, a technique that was skewered in the film Mondovino.

Micro-ox is the technique of bubbling oxygen into the wine while in cask. I find this fashions an unnaturally smooth wine, giving it a creepy, too soft feeling. I liken a sip of that kind of wine to the dead fish of a hand that has never worked. However, in the article I kept my opinions to myself.

I was flattered that the story, five years old, can still hit a nerve. And I was touched that the crew at WT, mostly a bunch of Muscadet loving men, ran to my defense.

I'm hunting the Leon Trotskys, the Philip Roths, the Chaucers and the Edith Whartons of the wine world. I want them natural and most of all, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue. With this messiah thing going on, I'm trying to swell the ranks of those who crave the differences in each vintage, celebrate nuance and desire wines that make them think, laugh, and feel. Welcome.

And, if you'd like a signed copy of either THE BATTLE FOR WINE AND LOVE OR HOW I SAVED THE WORLD FROM PARKERIZATION or NAKED WINE, feel free to contact me directly.